Science Project

Submission Document
SciFest Dubai

Section 1: Introduction and Summary

Name
Saiqa Pirmohamed
Age
16
School
Jumeirah College
Project Title
The chemistry behind ice
Project Summary (Max. 200 Words)
Give a brief overview of your project.

Optional additions to your summary (submit only 1 of the following options):

2-minute YouTube video (insert hyperlink)
slideshow with a maximum of twenty (20) slides (attach as a separate file)

For this science fair, we decided to conduct an investigation that would be useful to
our daily lives, whilst allowing us to examine and understand complex and
advanced scientific theories that we had never studied before. Consequently, the
investigation that we chose was called The chemistry behind Ice Cream. Although,
we had made ice cream several times using an old-fashioned hand-crank machine,
never had we once actually thought about the science behind it. This experiment
entailed the ways in which we could lower the freezing point of water by altering
certain factors such as changing the molality of salt. We need to understand why the
freezing point changes in a solution and why ice becomes colder when salt is added
to it. In order to do this in our experiment we are going to create a solution (which is
going to act as the ice-cream) and freeze it with salt and ice. Being in our first year of
A-levels, this would be a challenging experiment for us but hopefully one that we
could benefit from.

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Section 2: About Me
Introduce yourself / your team.
(Max.200 words)
We are a group of 3 keen chemists who are currently in our first year of A-levels at
Jumeirah College. Our subject choices include Maths, Art, French, Chemistry and
psychology. We consider ourselves to be all rounded students as we have a range of
hobbies such as sports, art and public speaking. We are from around the globe, from
Pakistan to Kenya and India. The main reason we decided to sign up for the Science
Festival was because we had a deep passion for chemistry and wanted to take it
further as a subject. We also knew it would be challenging to plan and carry out the
project whilst completing schoolwork and attending extra-curricular activities, but
we definitely love a challenge! We would love to study abroad at an esteemed
university, and we hope that this experience will aid us in the challenges to come!
Winning this science fair would give us the confidence in our own abilities and
hopefully encourage us to further peruse our interest in science. It would also allow
us to prove to ourselves that hard work definitely pays off!

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Section 3: Question / Proposal

Describe the question that you are investigating and your hypothesis, or
the problem that you are going to try to solve and the outcome that you
expect.
(Max. 500 words)
What is the perfect freezing temperature of ice cream? From our research we found that
when any substance is added to water the freezing point of that solution becomes lower than
the freezing point of pure water. To investigate this we will use an ice bath with salt to
produce an endothermic reaction in order to freeze salt-water solutions of salt with different
molalities of salt. Hopefully, by doing this at the end of our investigation we will be able to
calculate the temperature required to freeze each salt water solution, which is similar to
what is done with ice-cream. Our prediction is that this experiment will allow us to calculate
perfect freezing temperatures for each salt solution, as we know from our research that this
is a widely used process in the ice-cream industry

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Section 4: Research
An account of the research that you have done into your chosen category,
and how this has influenced your Project.
(Max. 500 words)
In our experiment we will be using an ice bath mixed with salt to freeze a test tube of
a salt water solution. Ice consists of water molecules locked in a crystalline structure.
Liquid water consists of free water molecules moving around in all directions. The
ice and water in this structure will be in equilibrium. Every once in a while a freeswimming water molecule will collide with the densely packed water molecules (ice
block) and in doing so give another water molecule the sufficient energy to break
away from the ice block. After this molecule of water is freed the water molecule that
set it free has now lost some energy and in doing so rises to the top of the ice and
becomes static again.

Now if we add salt to ice the equilibrium of ice and water (or freezing and melting
will be disrupted). This is because the crystalline structure of water molecules in ice
has been disrupted. In the ice now there are sodium ions and chloride ions, but the
number of collision in the ice are the same as before. Although, because the salt
molecules have replaced some water molecules not as many free-swimming
molecules can stick back together with the ice again, resulting in the freezing rate to
slow down so more ice is melting than freezing.

The melting ice in the ice bath draws energy from the surrounding solution (salt
water solution) in the test tube as heat energy, this energy breaks the hydrogen
bonds that keep the ice together. Due to this heat energy being transferred an
endothermic reaction takes place and the surrounding temperature lowers causing
the salt-water solution to freeze. This low temperature is required to freeze the saltwater solution, as salt water or any substance dissolved in water has a lower freezing
temperature than pure water. This should mean that if more substances are added to
water the freezing point of the solution should become lower.

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We want to find out how much lower the freezing point of the water will become as
we add more salt to the solvent. To do this we need to calculate the freezing point
depression, which is the process in which adding a solute to a solvent decreases the
freezing point of the solvent. Therefore, we need to work out the temperature
change. The factors that affect this are the molality (the number of moles of solute
per kilogram of solvent). The van't Hoff factor is how a molecule of solute dissociates
for example table salt, has a van't Hoff factor of 2 because it forms 2 ions (chloride
and sodium). The last factor is the Molal Freezing-Point-Depression Constant - the
variation in the freezing temperature of a pure solvent from that of the solvent in the
solution. Once we have these values they can be plugged into the equation in Figure
1 to give the freezing point depression (the temperature change) when the solute is
added to the solvent. This tells us by how much the freezing point of water changes
when additional substances are added, similar to ice cream.

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Section 5: Method / Testing and Redesign

Describe in detail how you carried out your experiment or tested your
solution.
(Max. 700 words)
1. Fill the Styrofoam cup full with ice and cover the ice with 3.1g of table
salt.
2. Stir the mixture
3. Use a digital scale and weigh 2.9g, 5.8 g, 11.7 g of table salt into different
test tubes.
4. Measure 10 mL of water in a measuring cylinder, and pour it into the testtube with the salt.
5. Stir, until all of the crystals are dissolved.
6. Label test tubes. The 4th test tube will be a control of just water.
7.

Place the test tube in the Styrofoam cup with the ice and salt. Make sure the liquid

in the test tube should be below the level of the ice and salt in the cup.

8. Stir the test liquid in the test tube gently with a thermometer
9. Record the temperature in your lab notebook when the first ice crystals
appear on the wall of the test tube. This is the freezing point of the test liquid.
10. Calculate the freezing point depressions, T.
11. Calculate the molalities of the table salt

IV: Molality of Salt

DV: The Freezing point of the solution
CV: The vant hoff factor, the size of the beaker, Grams of ice added to the ice,
grams of ice, size of Styrofoam cup, type of thermometer, ml of water.

Risks:
Hazard
Test tube

Ice and Salt

Glass beaker

Risk
Crack and cut us

Overcome
Make sure we dont drop the test
tube if we do immediately clean up
and go tell the nurse
When is gets extremely cold it can Wear gloves during the experiment
harm you if you touch it
Exposing glass beaker makes it
Dont keep the ice in the beaker for
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vulnerable to breakage

Materials:
Water
Ice
Permanent marker
Table or sea salt (sodium chloride, NaCl) (500 g)
Small spoon or scoop, for scooping up salt and sugar
Test tubes
Test tube rack
250 mL beakers (6)
1000 mL measuring
Gram balance, accurate to 0.1 grams
Thermometer
Styrofoam cup

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too long.

Section 6: Results
Your data and observations gathered during your experiment or testing,
presented clearly with a description of any patterns or trends.
(Max. 500 words)

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Solution

Substance

Freezing Van t
point after Hoff
30 mins
Factor
(C)

Molality

Kf for
water
(C/m)

Expected
Freezing point
depression
(C)

Freezing point
depression
(C )

#1
#2
#3
#4

NaCl
NaCl
NaCl

2
-1
-3
3

0.5
1.02
2.02
-

1.86
1.86
1.86
1.86

1.86
3.7944
7.5144
-

1
4
6
-

H2O

2
2
2
2

Freezing point depression/ expected freezing point depression

8
Freezing Point
Depression

7
6

Linear (Freezing Point

Depression)

5
Freezing points

Expected freezing point

depression

Linear (Expected
freezing point
depression)

2
1
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
Molality

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Our trend shows that as the molality increases, the freezing point depression increases. Our
expected freezing point depression increases similarly to our actual freezing point
depressions. This means we have no anomalies. This means that our experiment was
accurate. However, there is an obvious difference between our expected values and our real
freezing point depression; this is mainly due to us not using the real Vant Hoff factors for
the solutes in our solution. Often, less than their ideal values would be used due to
unknown and uncertain behaviour and interactions between the ions in a solution. Although
if this small difference (between our expected values and our real values) was to be omitted,
one can see that the trend still remains clear and as expected. When our molality was 0.5,
our freezing point depression was 1. However, when the molality was increased to 2.02, the
freezing point depression was calculated to be 6, thus showing a positive correlation
between the two factors.

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Section 7: Conclusion / Report

An explanation of how your experiment or testing answers your question,
or why it fails to do so, and whether or not the outcome was as you
expected.
(Max. 500 words)
Once we had completed our research, we came to the conclusion that as the molality
increases, the freezing point depression increases. For example at the molality 2.02 the
freezing point depression and the expected freezing point depression changed by 6 and 7.5
units respectively whereas the freezing point depression for 0.5 molality was significantly
lower. The reason for this is because as we increased the amount of sodium chloride, more of
the solvent ionized and thus disrupted the repeated pattern of the water molecules in the
ice. This made it consequently harder for the water molecules to reach the surface of the ice
and thus, the water froze at a slower rate. Once all the data was collected, we calculated the
expected freezing point depression and freezing point depression and identified many
trends. This can be seen in our results where it shows that as the molality increased, the
freezing point depression increased as well, proving our initial research and our actual
experiment coincided. We had also predicted that the surrounding ice would have an effect
on the freezing point of our solution and once again, we were proven correct. The reason for
this is that when the ice melted, it drew heat energy from the surroundings (the salt
solution) and an endothermic reaction takes place. This causes the salt solution to freeze.
Therefore, our hypothesis was found correct as we proved that when any substance is added
to water the freezing point of that solution becomes lower than the freezing point of pure
water. Therefore, we were able to successfully calculate the freezing point depression of each
solution, which is similar to what is done with ice-cream. If we were to do this experiment
again, we would perhaps use 3 samples of each molality in order to increase the accuracy of
our experiment and identify and omit any anomalies. Furthermore, we could use an
electrical thermometer this would give us more decimal places to our results and
consequently make our results more precise. Lastly, rather than using a Styrofoam cup we
would use a better water bath because the test tube was hard to fit inside the Styrofoam cup.
This could have affected our results by making the endothermic reaction less efficient.

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Section 8: Bibliography, References, Appendices and

Acknowledgements
You may also include any graphs, diagrams, or tables here

https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1598
http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/solutions/faq/print-why-salt-coolsicewater.shtml
http://www.ausetute.com.au/molality.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YglP2El_cqU
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fairprojects/project_ideas/FoodSci_p013.shtml#background

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Notes

Ensure the document has been properly formatted. (e.g. tables/text are
in proper sequence)
Save as PDF
Name the PDF document as follows: Your name followed by
SciFestProject
(e.g. John_Smith_SciFestProject)
Email the PDF document to raya.bidshahri@scifestdubai.com
Ensure the subject in your email is Science Festival Project
Deadline to register your project: 30 th September 2016 (Click here to
register)
Deadline to submit your project: 20th October 2016

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